Model UN wins 3rd place in conference

Baruch College’s Model United Nations team recently participated in the annual “National Model United Nations Conference” and placed in what is equivalent to third place, which is better than they expected.

The conference took place in The Sheraton Times Square Hotel from March 18 to March 22. The Baruch team was assigned to represent China in the different committees within the conference, with each discussing a different issue. The committees that Baruch students participated in included the Eco Stock, the World Food Programme, international immigration and the general assemblies.

The goals of Model UN are to help students develop skills in building consensus and drafting resolutions.

The conference is team-based and a point system calculates how many points each committee deserved based on their members’ performances.

The qualifications for an award include how many points a team has earned, public speaking skills, team work and leadership skills, as well as the quality of the resolutions on which the students worked.

Before the conference, each student was given a guide listing three topics to prepare to debate at the conference, of which they only debated one or two.

Sixteen students from Baruch attended the conference this year, which, according to Baruch Model UN President Laura Agosto, is more than the team usually takes.

This conference is one of the three that the team participates in every year. The other conferences include the “International Model United Nations Conference,” which takes place in Montreal in January, and the “Crisis Conference,” which takes place at New York University in June.

However, the team will not be attending the “Crisis Conference” this year and will instead be holding their own version of the conference internally at Baruch.

In the “Crisis Conference,” crises are given to the teams and students are judged based on how they respond to them.

The team is planning on focusing on the Iranian hostage crisis. The team will split into two teams, with one half working as moderators for the event and the rest working to solve the crisis.

The goal of the simulation is to solve the problem for themselves. The conference is more of a creative and informal event, in which students do not have to do as much as usual and can bring in their own storylines, Agosto explained.

The team is not attending the event at NYU because there was no more room available in the roster.

There are two recruitment periods for the Model UN team in Baruch each year, one in the fall semester and one in the spring.

They are searching for people who have good speaking skills, who are passionate and work well with others and have good writing skills.

Though the international conference is usually the most popular among students, the positive experience of Baruch students at the national conference this year has led it to become more popular and the focus of more students for next year.